Generalcomments

Dear all,

Thank you all for visiting, reading and sharing the news with me on the Fukushima Appeal Blog. I’ve kept it running since February 2012. Unfortunately, I will need some break now to attend to some of my health issues.

I would like to thank this blog and its supporters for giving me an opportunity to become a part of the slowly awakening global community during this very important time of global change. I had zero knowledge of nuclear before the Fukushima disaster, and was and still am a just normal citizen. It’s been hard to see Japan becoming a criminal, immoral and authoritarian country since the Fukushima Disaster. So it’s been a huge awakening and healing process to have a platform to speak out instead of feeling powerless, angry and sad about it. With the new secret law that is going to be introduced in Japan soon, Japanese people will need more help than at any other time in its history from foreign bloggers, doctors and scientists. Please remember Fukushima. I hope that the more difficulties we may encounter, the stronger and connected we will become to fight against injustice and be able to act from our heart space. (Mia)

As a nuclear campaigner, I have seen the nuclear industry
walk away from its mistakes many times, ignoring people’s suffering.

But it is the terrible effect on people of a nuclear
disaster such as Fukushima that really brings home the flaws of the nuclear system.

Nearly two years after the disaster, the lives of
hundreds of thousands of people in Japan are still being disrupted. When the
disaster hit, their lives were turned upside down. They were forced from their
homes, they lost their jobs, families were split up and communities were
abandoned due to the radioactive fallout.

People are not able to get fair compensation. Many are
still unable to return home or rebuild their lives elsewhere. Imagine living in
limbo like that, stuck between past and future.

How can this be happening?Blame the unfair system that
protects the nuclear industry from paying for its failures. This system is
called nuclear liability. It is a joke.Make the industry payA risky industry like the nuclear
industry should have to pay for its damages, just the way big oil companies
have to pay for spills. But the nuclear industry is protected. Governments did
that to help the nuclear industry get started decades ago. They have never
fixed the problems this protection created.Greenpeace examines the flaws of
the unfair system in a new report, Fukushima Fallout: Nuclear business makes people pay
and suffer.We commissioned three experts to
look at the continued Fukushima suffering in relation to the worldwide system
of nuclear conventions that lets the nuclear industry off the hook, while at
the same time, forcing the public to pay the vast majority of the costs in the
event of a nuclear accident.When there is a disaster, the
system doesn't require a nuclear plant operator to pay more than a tiny
fraction of the costs of a disaster. Even in Japan, where nuclear operators
were supposed to pay all the costs of a disaster, TEPCO, the operator of the
Fukushima nuclear plant, simply does not have enough money to pay more than a
fraction.Flawed designIt gets worse. The system doesn't
make the companies that supply material for nuclear plants pay anything at all
to help the victims. So the world's big reactor sellers, GE, Hitachi and
Toshiba among others, pay nothing if there is a disaster at one of the reactors
they sell.The gap between what the nuclear
industry pays and what the public pays is enormous. In most countries with
reactors, the damages a nuclear operator might be required to pay range from
350 million euros to 1.5 billion euros. That range is tiny when compared with
the costs of a disaster.For example, the Fukushima
disaster could cost up to US$250 billion, according to recent estimates. The
cost estimates for the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 range from 55 billion euros
to 270 billion euros.The Japanese government had to
nationalise TEPCO because it couldn't pay even the early recovery costs.
TEPCO's key reactor suppliers GE, Hitachi, and Toshiba, built the plant's
reactors based on a flawed design. But they are protected. No help from them.This means that Japanese taxpayers
will end up paying the bulk of the costs of the disaster.This isn't a problem that just
affects Japan. If there was a nuclear disaster at any one of the world's 436
reactors, the same story would play out. Taxpayers would pay most of the costs.It is well past time when this
flawed system should be fixed. It’s simple: the polluter must pay. The
companies that create nuclear risks must be made to pay for their failures, not
the people who suffer from them.That's why Greenpeace
International has launched a campaign to change the system. Our Fukushima
Fallout report that explains the problem is the start. We need your help.Sign our petition. Let governments know that the entire
nuclear industry must be held accountable for the damage it causes.Rianne
Teule, Energy Campaigner at Greenpeace InternationalＰｅｔｉｔｉｏｎ： http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/getinvolved/they-profit-you-pay/

Nuclear Expert Arnie Gundersen, Fairewinds Energy Education:
One of the things I’ve discovered when I look at the drawings, the
accident movies, you see the plume going down on the ground, which
didn’t happen at Chernobyl. Chernobyl burned upward […]
At Fukushima the plume goes down, it’s something called ‘Building
Wake Effect’. So I think that the exposures in close, in the 20 and 30
and 40 km range are actually going to be higher than we saw at Chernobyl
and because of the fact all of the stacks and everything that was
designed to get that radioactivity up in the air were destroyed because
they had no electricity to run the fans. [...] you’ll have to listen to
my speech*.

Tuesday, 26 February 2013

There were 2 hour long program over the 2
weeks nearer to March 11 anniversary. I watched both of them.They were well documented and featuring how
children have been feeling from their point of view which was very
touching. I heard lots of good comments from my friends who
watched, especially about the second one with children in Minami
Soma-city.

However
I was disappointed with these reasons. First one was focused on first a
few weeks of what happened at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, but I think
it gave an impression that it was about “the past” because it never mentioned what’s been happening till now even there has been continuous leaking of
the radiation into the air and the sea. What about reactor 4? It
could potentially bring even more catastrophe than ever. “The greatest tsunami in
1,000 years” which was used by BBC2 program was a
phrase once used by Tepco, then later it was criticized as a wrong expression
in Japan. I read a report which said the highest wave that hit Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear power plant was 15m. In 2008 Tepco submitted their report
in which said over 15 m height of wave could hit the plant, but they dismissed
their own calculation and did nothing to implement their report. Tepco
shouldn’t have really said one in 1000 years and
unimaginable, it is more like one in 100
years, and it showed how un-responsible company Tepco is. I
wonder if BBC did their own research for making these programs. If you
look at Japanese history, there was a
huge tsunami with highest wave 38.2m hit the east coast of Japan in 1896 which
came after magnitude -8.5 earthquake, resulting in 22,000 people dead.

Also I would like to comment on “Iodine tablet”. Japanese
government never instructed citizens in the affected area to take the
tablet. People who took it were Tepco people’s family as they knew the danger, and
also citizens in Miharu-machi where they decided to take it voluntarily without
waiting for the government’s instruction. So it
is doubtful that in the first program one father giving her daughter the iodine
tablet. Even if he did, it doesn’t represent at
all for most of citizens. Also there
isn’t any
single case of children who already suffered radiation related symptoms such as
nose bleeding, diarrhea 2 months after the explosions. Children who already have these symptoms are not just worried about
their future as it said in BBC program, but worried about what’s happening in their body right now as well. Already three
children developed thyroid cancer.It’s
more likely that seven more will develop thyroid cancer, too.

It
seems that BBC doesn’t’ want to broadcast anything that might
the citizens to stir up anti-nuclear movement. When there were so many
demonstrations going on towards and around March 11 this year, I heard nothing
about them in the main stream media.

(1m-) We know that damage to the
Fukushima Diichi nuclear plant causes substantial risk to people live nearby.
With careful scientific guidance US warned American Citizens to evacuate out of
80miles radius of the crippled plant……..

(2m30s) We do not expect
harmful levels of radiation to reach the United States whether it's west coast
or Hawaii or Alaska or US territories in the Pacific. That is the judgment of the nuclear regulatory
commission and many other experts.Furthermore
public health experts do not recommend people in the US take precautionary
measures beyond staying informed……..

In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph
Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in
infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima
meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken
nuclear plant.
The eight cities included in the report are San Jose, Berkeley, San
Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, and Boise, and the
time frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following
the disaster.

The US soldiers who were in the
Operation Tomodachi soon after the disaster must have been exposed to high dose
of ionizing radiation during the operation and have been suffering various illnesses.They should be well looked after.

USA Department
of Defense recently published a report which says that they recognizes the long
term health effects of ionizing radiation.

Evacuation

In Fukushima there was 2 million population including 360,000 children.

The Japanese government evacuated about 100,000 (87,000 out of 20km radios of the plant), and most of them are still in Fukushima prefecture. 65% of Fukushima prefecture became the radiation control area (a level of the contamination is more than 37,000Bq/m2), so therefore most of them are still in radioactively contaminated area unless they evacuated out of Fukushima prefecture into safe area voluntarily without any financial help from the government. Voluntary evacuees within Fukushima prefecture is 23,551, voluntary evacuees out of Fukushima prefecture is 27,776 as of 22/9/11. Even Fukushima-city which is 50km away from the plant is no longer safe, especially for children. The government statistics shows that only about 36,000(including about 20,000children, ) left Fukushima prefecture. And most of them left Fukushima Prefecture voluntarily without any financial support from the government.(October 2012)

Food Safaty

Amount of allowable ionizing radiation in foodincluding rice in Japan is now 100BQ/kg for cesium.

So this could mean that contaminated food which they can’t sell in Japan could be exported to the countries that have more relaxed regulations, such as EU countries and Thai (500) and Singapore, Hong Kong, Philippine, Vietnam, Malaysia (1000) and USA (1200).

*A Woman Who Refuses to Give In to A New Nuke PlantPlease send her a postcard: Atsuko Ogasawara, owner of “Asako House”, built in the center of the planned Ohma Nuclear Power Plant premises. She would appreciate it if you could send a post card (just with a few words is ok). Receiving a mail as much as possible helps her position to keep up anti nuclear campaign. Here is “Asako House”’s address: Ms. Atsuko Ogasawara, c/o Asako House, 396 Aza Ko-okoppe, Oh-aza Ohma, Ohma Machi, Shimokita Gun, Aomori

ＧＥＮＥＲＡＬ ＩＮＦＯＲＭＡＴＩＯＮ

Fukushima disaster is not over. It seems getting worse. Continuous leaking of ionizing radiation into the atmosphere (10million Bq/hour or more) and into the sea.. There seems no end and no solution to stop it. There is no good result in decontamination work. 27 children developed thyroid cancer. More reports of deformed babies. More people of dying of leukemia and sudden death.… Yet the Japanese Government wants all evacuees to go back to their home land by 2020. Even trying to sell nuclear to other countries, claiming it’s going to be safe. I hope information from this blog to give you views from the victim’s side of stories, health issues and related information on nuclear disaster, especially about Fukushima disaster. We should remember and learn lessons from ongoing tragedy happening in Chernobyl and Fukushima.

100% nuclear free: Japan shut down its last reactor on 15/9/13 – There has been no shortage of electricity since 3.11

*IAEA ＆ WHO downplays the danger of radiation. (Refer to the comment on Feb.2012)

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant up date news

(October 10, 2012)

The Fukushima disaster is far from over, with 10million BQ every hour of ionizing radiation (80% is coming out of reactor 2) leaking continuously into the air (as of October, 2012). No human can get near to the reactors. Even robot can only stay a couple of hours. Reactor 4 is still the most worrying, with 1535 spent fuel rods in the pool. A further6, 375 spent fuel rods are stored in a shared pool only 50 meters away from the Reactor 4. After the disaster, the maximum allowable dose of ionized radiation was raised to 250mSv/yfrom 100 mSv/y for Tepco workers (3000 workers every day) until the situation is restored to normal. Because of the dangerously high level of ionized radiation at the site, they can only work for a limited time, which makes progress slow, and more and more workers have been exposed to the maximum radiation, which means that it could be difficult to find enough people to work there continuously during the next at least 40 years work of decommissioning.

Nobody knows how and when we will be able to say that the Fukushima disaster is over.